in the stars i find your beating heart
by coerulus
Summary: –if brokenness could take a human form, it would be him. zuko ღ katara / happy birthday, faatima!


She kneels by the mouth of the river on a night when the clouds stretch across the stars and the almost-circle of moon, dimming whatever bluish light may fall on the earth. Midnight passes her by quickly, even though the world is still except for her reflection rippling on the surface of the water. The air is unbearably hot, like being near some enormous animal with its jaws open. She twirls one finger just above the water, making a small whirlpool at first, and then parting it to make a pathway of dirt and clay in the middle with walls of water on the side.

"You're awake."

The river rears up behind her and moves to lunge at the speaker, but falls back into its placid waves when Zuko holds his hands up. "I couldn't sleep," she says. "It was too hot," she ad libs, hoping the lie will lend a little bit of credibility to the statement of the obvious she makes.

"It is. But it's humid too, so my bending is worse." His voice is slightly strained, as if his throat is swollen with a cold. He demonstrates, lighting a fire in the palm of his hand that's just as beautiful as Katara has ever seen from him. Whereas his old style yielded darker, more crimson fire, his trip to learn from the Sun Warriors with Aang now allows him to produce a richer orange fire. He looks at the flame for a moment and then closes his fingers back over his palm, extinguishing it soundlessly.

"Don't sell yourself short," she says. "It's night, too. Tomorrow—" The words trip in her mouth on their way out. What can she say about tomorrow? It's all going to be okay, everything will be fine after a brief act of regicide and then the world will settle back down to the way it all was before?

His fingers twitch slightly, the cotton of his shirt wrinkling between them. "I'll have to challenge her to an Agni Kai. Or she'll challenge me, and I'll be forced to accept." The moonlight settles in the valleys of his scar when he turns.

She stands to face him. "I believe in you. I know you can do this." Her eyes are black, but not in a cold, stony way—a black that shines, one that shows life behind its pupils. "You're an amazing firebender; I mean, you taught the Avatar. That's something."

"I can't." He releases the cotton from his grip, damp with nervous sweat. "You don't understand."

"Why not?"

"I'd have to kill her," he says bluntly. "I don't like Azula. Neither do any of you. But I don't know if I could do it. I don't know if I can kill anymore."

The boy that sits on the rock in front of her is not the prince of the Fire Nation. Zuko holds his head in his pathetically skinny arms and hugs his knees tightly to his chest—if brokenness could take a human form, it would be him.

"I know Azula and I don't have a relationship like you and Sokka do," Zuko continues, looking out across the river. His mouth is set in a harsh line across his face. "She's a horrible person. She's done some unspeakable things. But I couldn't kill her. And I couldn't kill my father either, if I was Aang."

Beside him, Appa snores softly, the wind from his mouth gently across the tops of the grass surrounding Zuko's rock.

"Do you _have_ to kill her?"

He nods, a very slight tilt of his chin, still not looking at her, but instead directing his gaze at the clump of drying beige grass at his foot. "It didn't use to be that way. But now, it's considered weak and dishonorable to spare your opponent, even after you've burned them. She would want me to kill her," he says. "I don't think she could live with the humiliation. She couldn't live like me." He swallows thickly. "I wish my uncle could help me. I don't know what to do. I don't know what I _can_ do."

She stays silent. Neither of them are cut out for murder—children never are. War is a wound deep in his flesh that not even the water will heal.

"If I die—" he begins.

"No," she says, because he has been walking a thin line into a domain of thought she doesn't even want to think about, let alone talk about, "don't say it." The end of his sentence hangs unspoken between them. She cannot, _will not_ add his name to a list of war casualties, or press her fingers to the grooves of cold marble on a white memorial stone after the war ends. "Don't talk like that."

"It might not all be okay, Katara. You would know."

And she _does_ know, but still cannot make the distinction between hopefulness and naïveté. She knows he might die, but wants to believe anyway that he will make it out alive, and one day, maybe a thousand sunrises and another thousand sunsets from tonight, the world will find peace. The notion is far fetched and at times, implausible, but to believe in a better world hurts her less than looking at it in reality.

"What do you think you'll do after we defeat her?" Her voice is so small, so very small next to the great stars and the yawning sky.

He doesn't answer, at first, but sits next to her and runs his tongue over his teeth in contemplation. The knots in his shoulder and neck are visible, tangible products of the countless nights spent in fitful sleep riddled with nightmares.

"I don't know," he answers finally, and his voice cracks, hoarse with wet tears.

 _Azula always lies_ , his younger self chants. Azula is cruel. Azula is selfish. Azula would kill everyone he loves without hesitation. He thinks about what Katara said just a week ago on sparing Yon Rha's life—too weak to do it, or strong enough not to? The world would see him as the same pathetic child who dared challenge the Fire Lord to an Agni Kai at age thirteen if he spared Azula's life. The same world would see him as a cold blooded killer if he took it.

"Do what you think is right," she says simply, as if she were asking him to brew her a cup of Uncle's jasmine tea.

He says nothing to this statement, only gives a bitter and rather cynical scoff. There is never a right answer to war. "Okay."

She leans her head gently on his shoulder in acknowledgment of his (terrible) response. All the questions she is too afraid to let the world hear are translated through the gesture. They watch the gentle waves of the river, unsure of what they're looking for; a face maybe, or a solution to be divined in the reflection of the man in the moon.

They do not speak. They do not reveal their tears to the world. They guard their heartbreak and bury it with their fears in the dirt, where they hope neither will sprout and grow. Eventually, her eyes start to droop, even though his are wide open.

"Go to sleep," he says at last. The clouds have finally begun to separate and reveal the moon behind them. She looks at him sleepily from the curve of his neck. "I'll take first watch."

They both clumsily clamber up the side of the sky bison's head, and Katara wraps her blanket around her despite the heat and humidity. He sits just mere inches from her, watching her ribs rise and fall with her even, steady breathing. He wonders who thought it was fair to demand sacrifice from someone so pure of heart.

He wonders how he ever did.

Sometime before daybreak, she wakes up and stretches her arms out where her hand falls into his, and sits up. "I'll take it from here," she says, voice quiet and thick with sleep.

She doesn't move her hand. He doesn't try to make her.

fin.


End file.
